Astraweb Review

Astraweb, a well known Usenet Service Provider and NOT a reseller, provides good value with a lot of options that make their Usenet service appealing. Astraweb Usenet has block accounts, variety of payment options, SSL and every feature you would need in a Usenet provider. Currently AstraWeb is offering some Usenet specials so be sure to take advantage of them.

Astraweb Binary Retention

Astraweb is currently offering 2264 across ALL groups.You can visit astraweb.com to check out their current retention levels and to watch it rise.

Pricing

Astraweb offers 2 general plan categories:

Unlimited Downloads – currently the best deal is the Astraweb $15 for 2 months special – which means you pay only $15 a month for two months of unlimited high speed downloads. Do this if you are considering Astraweb. Take advantage of this deal while it lasts.

Block Downloads Astraweb offers no time limit restrictions and you can buy blocks of Usenet downloads for $10 for 25 GB or $25 for 180 GB.

Astraweb Free Trial

Contrary to what you may have heard Astraweb does offer a free trial. Its only a 24 hour free trial and you would have to request a refund through support but it does give you enough time to check out their service. Also by taking advantage of their current $11 month or $15 / two months special, its hard to go wrong or lose a lot of cash with Astraweb.

Astraweb Speed

Astraweb usenet download speeds are very good. Astraweb is not slow and to get an idea see our speed test below or you can do a traceroute on their website to get an idea of how fast you could connect to Astraweb. They are plugged into Level 3, LimeLight Networks and Savvis Intenet backbone servers and have servers located in North Carolina so you should get a good connection throughput in the USA( And in Europe)

Astraweb Ports / Configuration Instructions

General Server: news.astraweb.com

European Server: eu.news.astraweb.com

US Server: us.news.astraweb.com

Ports: 119, 23, 1818 or 8080

Secure Server: ssl.astraweb.com Ports 443 or 563

ssl-eu.astraweb.com Ports 443 or 563 (European)

ssl-us.astraweb.com Ports 443 or 563 (US)

Maximum Connections: 50 connections

Security/Anonymity

SSL is offered included with every plan. Also no logs are kept, they have anonymous group requests and anonymous posting. If you can’t find a group, then you can request for it anonymously as a member.

Other Nice Features

Astraweb has good customer service, US and European server, SSL included all of which are additional positives

Astraweb vs Other Usenet Providers

Astraweb is one of our top recommendations and where they really shine is in the area of price performance. Their $11 special is hard to beat for all that they offer. The one provider that we feel comes close or is potentially better would be Newshosting as they have unlimited Usenet at the same retention levels with a solid newsreader for $10 / month.

I’ve had only amazing experiences with Astraweb. $11/month is a great price. My 10Mbps connection is always maxed out. Never had any issues and I’ve been using it for a year… and using it a lot.

Full stars because it completely deserves them.

Jayme on October 31st, 2009

Have used several access providers and Astraweb is the best.

Timmah on January 4th, 2010

Have used Astraweb for a couple of months now and have found it to be execellent in retention, speeds and price. Would highly recommend.

UserX on August 8th, 2010

I’ve been using Astraweb’s block accounts for the past 3 years. I don’t download much so it is extremely convenient. Their retention and blocks have increased year by year and they don’t nickel and dime for stuff like SSL. Great company, great prices.

Enn Vee on August 17th, 2010

I’ve been using Astraweb for years now and have had a great experiance. I recommend them highly.

Zaac on September 21st, 2010

Been using astraweb for about 4 months now. This is by far the experience i’ve ever had. The speeds are always consistent, I have 50mb internet and it always maxes out my connection. I used a lot of other service providers over the years and this has been the most reliable and fastest i’ve ever used. The retention is great – it looks like ive found the best of the best with the best prices.

Johny on September 25th, 2010

Simply the best service available. You can use PayPal instead of your credit card number, also cheap per month subscription and high download speeds (9MB/s are no problem), very simple and straight forward website. Sounds almost like a dream!

Tiamat on November 1st, 2010

Their 96 USD/year is the best you can achieve now and the speed is great (my 100Mbps connection is often used at 100% and the average speed here in eastern Europe using the american Astraweb server is 80% of 100Mbps).

Chris W on January 4th, 2011

Joined their 11 USD/Month deal and very pleased so far.
Excellent speed and reliability from the European server (I am in the UK)
I can highly recommend them.

kostik on January 7th, 2011

I did the same as Chris did, joined the 11 $ plan and so far im pretty pleased of the 120 mbit connection i got i normaly get 100 – 110. Good stuff

Davidy on February 12th, 2011

After reading the other customer reviews, anything I would say would just be redundant. Astraweb is hands down the best bang for the buck. If you want value (which in NSP terms means speed, SSL connectivity, access to the most newsgroups and retention)look no further. The annual rate is even sweeter.
After all that, you might guess that the service is perfect. I will tell you that I have had a couple of “newsgroup not found on server” notices (not many) and unfortunately, more than should be “article not found” notices. If you have a wad to shoot, go Lexus and get Giganews. Never had ANY messages from their service, and if I could afford it, I wouldn’t go anywhere else. That said, for the “on-a-budget” crowd, Astraweb is NSP home.

I stopped using them and got a Newshosting account because Astraweb’s drives seem to or are becoming less and less reliable ! To many files are missing pieces to the point where qpar can’t repair because not enough blocks get downloaded ! I’ve been back and forth with them on overcoming the problem and they refuse to face their own problem !
Unfortunately, Newshosting has their own problems (stops and starts on downloading). I’ve tested the net and it is definitely them. Giganews doesn’t have either problem but, at 3 times the price . . .

Drake Jones on May 16th, 2013

I used Astraweb for a several years. Astraweb folks are posting phoney positive reviews on websites like this one. There pretty bad as Usnet servers go. Your money can be better spent. Astraweb is honestly at the low end of the scale as far as retention and incompletes go.

Alan on October 2nd, 2013

I have been with AstraWeb for four years now. Before, I had Giganews, Newshosting and Easynews. Until AstraWeb upgraded their servers at the end of August, 2013 they’ve been a first class Usenet provider, with 20 simultaneous connections, free SSL, 6.5 – 6.9 MBs download speed and 1.1 MBs upload speed, etc…
Unfortunately, speed is not the only factor. Starting in the last months, more than a third of the posts available on their servers have ALL their files 20-60% corrupted. PAR2 files can’t help, since more than half of the blocks are bad, including those in the PAR2 files itself. The posters of the corrupted files are among the best and reputable on Usenet, and I’ve never had problems with their post before. I’ve contacted AstraWeb technical support, but so far they did not acknoledge the problem. I intend to go back to Newshosting, as soon as possible.

i have been using astraweb for over 10 years, never had any problems or complaints always buy a year at a time. five stars ++

of course they got DMCA’s like the rest.

MrMaster on December 1st, 2014

I’m very unhappy with AstraWeb….my guess it that 10% are missing.
Why do AtraWeb get 5 starts….they should have 1 start!
They might get DMCA’s…but that’s not really my problem. I buy a service, and they don’t deliver

Marion Marshall on December 5th, 2014

Missing posts are common to any USENET provider and are an effect of DMCA laws. One strategy for Astraweb is to utilize connections on the EU server and on the USA server. The takedowns time vary among the various servers to be sure you have setup two connections on the astraweb EU server and one to the astraweb US server.

yuppicide on January 12th, 2015

I was using Astraweb. I liked their service. I am on one of the unlimited speed plans, because I have 105Mbps internet at home. I get between 7-12MB/sec download. I can only download 25GB, though. I decided to spend more and just purchase a bunch of gigs. Then I realized a lot of stuff I want is incomplete. I end up downloading all this stuff for nothing and wasting my GB.

I switched to EasyNews.. I still have Astraweb since I purchased so many GB, but with EasyNews I get faster speeds up to like 16 or 17MB/sec and those files that weren’t complete completed. I downloaded a tv show that’s not been released on DVD.. and it was pasted about 5.6 years ago to Usenet! Downloaded no problem.